She was arrested and charged for possession and discharge of a weapon on school property too

A teenage girl from Florida has been expelled from her high school for an accidental explosion caused by mixing chemicals together [outside] on school grounds.

Kiera Wilmot, 16, a Bartow High School student in Florida, was expelled from school when her chemistry experiment exploded. She was mixing some household chemicals (toilet cleaner and aluminum foil) in an 8-ounce water bottle when the top popped off unexpectedly and an explosion occurred.

According to Wilmot, she thought this combination would simply create a bit of smoke, and that the explosion was an accident.

However, Wilmot was arrested on Monday and charged with possession and discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device.

Kiera Wilmot

She was also expelled from school, and will now have to continue her high school career in an expulsion program.

These extreme consequences are due to zero-tolerance programs, which were enacted in schools in 1994. At that time, Congress required states to adopt laws that expelled students who brought firearms to school for at least a year. All 50 states adopted the laws in order to receive federal funding.

Many are in opposition of these laws, saying that it isn't fair to good kids who make occasional mistakes. Many oppose what happened to Wilmot as well, but the school district has responded to the incident saying that they reacted properly, as the law requires.

"Unfortunately, what she did falls into our code of conduct," Leah Lauderdale, a spokeswoman for the district, tells Riptide. "It's grounds for immediate expulsion.

"We urge our parents to convey to their kids that there are consequences to their actions."

I agree. I also inferred that she was doing this as part of a class assignment based on how this article and headline is worded. It should be more clear that she was doing this without permission or supervision outside of class but on school grounds.

And was it really a "chemistry experiment accident" or was it just someone goofing around? If she was actually trying to learn something through the experiment then this really should be nothing more than a slap on the wrist and told get permission first in the future. If she was doing this to purposely cause an explosion because she thought it would be cool then yeah expel her.

it was not a chemistry experimentit was on school ground outsideit was not assigned by a teacherno teacher was supervising this as it was 7 am when class hasn't startedno chemistry teacher would teach kids to use drano and aluminum foil in a bottle as it will cause a reaction and creates a large amount of gas in a short period of time. Being in a closed bottle, it will cause it explode. The explosion can take off fingers and inject acid at a high velocity into your skin. I've never seen drano in a lab, just in a locked wall locker marked "janitors only"

This article leaves out so many details to make the girl look good. It's like every article here has something against the government or authority.